‘It’s like living in a prison’: inside the besieged Palestinian village isolated from the rest of the West Bank

Beit Iksa, located north-west of Jerusalem, surrounded by Israel’s separation wall, effectively isolating it from the rest of the West Bank. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

In January this year, four-year-old Ruqayya Jahalin, her mother and her five siblings were waiting in a taxi at the checkpoint that is the only way in and out of their home, the occupied West Bank village of Beit Iksa.

Inspections by the Israeli military or border police mean it often takes a long time for Palestinians to enter the besieged village, but everything seemed normal until, out of nowhere, the border police started shooting indiscriminately, hitting Ruqayya in the back.